Menu

The Problem with Contracting

One of my biggest challenges when developing Car Washer (my last indie game, coming soon to Steam) was with finding and keeping suitable contractors. I couldn’t do everything myself and, while I did have some money set aside for contractors, it was nowhere near enough to hire a full time employee. So everyone on the Car Washer team, myself included, had to fit our work on the game in around our regular jobs and/or school work. It also meant that some people had to drop out when they got too busy with other things. I had especially bad luck with programmers, going through several of them over the course of development, delaying the game quite a bit.

Actually, one of the reasons I decided on Aurora’s Nightmare as my next project was because I knew that, if necessary, I could do all the work myself. That said, I do have some contractors working on AN, such as the very talented Badriel who is doing the background and CG art. The reason being that, while I could make Aurora’s Nightmare entirely on my own, I’m much better at some parts of game development than others. For example, my artwork isn’t anywhere near as good as Badriel’s, so bringing him on resulted in a pretty big visual upgrade. In other cases, using a contractor saves me a lot of time that I can use to work on other things that only I can do (like the script).

Fortunately, unlike with Car Washer, I haven’t had any major contracting problems yet with Aurora’s Nightmare, though there have been some bumps in the road here and there. For example, the composer I was hoping to use recently bowed out so I’ll have to start searching for a new one. And I’ve been having trouble finding another person to help speed up the character shading.

But despite that, things are progressing steadily, if a bit slower than I originally hoped.